Cheryl Dashke Arrested with 25-Plus Animals in Van; My Cat Haven Story

According to the Belleville News-Democrat, Cheryl Dashke was arrested on Sunday in Swansea, Illinois, for living in her van with 24 cats and 1 dog held in pet carriers. Dashke was arrested before in March 2000 for keeping 88 dogs and 39 cats in deplorable conditions within her mobile home at Sunny Shores Mobile Home Park in Granite City, Illinois. Click here to read about these pet stories on the BND site.

Cheryl Dashke obviously did not learn her lesson the first time that authorities arrested her for having too many animals in her home, and for not caring for those animals in a proper manner. So, what was Cheryl Dashke thinking while trying to care for over 25 animals in a van while she was homeless? We can only guess.

Back in the last century, my home accidentally became a cat haven; a few cats here, and a few cats there. It was a "kitties everywhere" type of place. This was not a planned adventure that I went into willingly with my eyes wide open. Instead, one morning while the thermometer was reading well below zero, I opened the door to my four-cat home to find that I had six more half-grown, half-frozen and half-starving cats to thaw out.

No, calling "somebody" to take care of these poor abandoned cats was not an option; there was a storm raging outside that had both the phone lines and the snow packed roads out of commission. Somebody had dumped these small cats in two carriers on my doorstep; my choice was to try to save them or to let them die. After locking the parrot into my bedroom, I marched right off to my food storage area and lovingly kissed my winter supply case of expensive canned chicken goodbye.

This is where all similarities between the Cheryl Dashke story and mine part ways. Unlike Cheryl Dashke who was living in a van, I was living in a Southeast Idaho ghost-town with lots of room and outbuildings not far away from the tourist town of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. It was a kitty paradise with housing, room to run, very few neighbors to annoy, and plenty of mice to play with.

Since I owned a store in the tourist town, to go with my ghost-town homestead, it didn't take long for word to go out that I was taking in unwanted cats: Not True! But, the cats kept showing up in the middle of the night with their little suitcases in hand; some came with food dishes and litter, others with large bags of food, one came with two beds... What none of these cats came with was a spoken human explanation.

Between 1985 and the late 1990's my full-time second job was finding homes for unwanted cats. I had an elderly vet who was helping me to patch-up, spay or neuter, or give shots to everybody who needed his services; without his involvement, I would not have been able to keep my outbuildings open to my homeless 4-footed visitors.

Mixed-up with the domestic cats that were being dumped, there were a few "wild" cats that nobody could get near no matter what we did. I totally enjoyed trying to make friends with this human hating variety of cat. The wild cats were fed away from the domestic cats so that I wouldn't have any unwanted disease problems.

One summer, one of the newly arrived cats got away from me in a flurry of teeth and claws and instantly became a wild cat. She decided that she was going to live under one of the outbuildings, and only come out at night to eat. One evening, I drove up in the driveway, to find this newly wild female cat lying on her side beside the long-skinny trough type of food dish. She seemed to have two kittens trying to eat, but I hadn't thought that she was pregnant? Skunks!!! She was trying to feed two baby skunks...

Cheryl Dashke was arrested twice for having too many animals in pens without proper care. There are three kinds of people who end up with lots of animals: Those who raise animals for resale, those who assist animals into finding new homes, and those who hoard animals like other collectibles without concern toward their wellbeing.

The act of animal hoarding is very similar to the stories you hear about people with the mental illness that makes them unable to throw anything out. Animal hoarders must have their cages of animals, or they do not feel complete.

Some people just hoard one animal tied to the end of a chain without attention in their yards, while others have larger collections of uncared for animals in their possession. Animal hoarding is a big problem in America that nobody seems to have an answer for.

Cheryl Dashke and I were both free to take in as many animals as we wanted without anybody asking us if we had any vet care or funding available to provide for our charges. Cheryl Dashke was only arrested after an anonymous tip to the police. To you and I it is obvious that you can't let 25-cats live in a van with you without proper food and potty boxes, but this fact doesn't seem to have been apparent to Cheryl Dashke.

I have been asked the question; would I become a Cat Lady again? My answer is always, "Yes!" - If I had the right landscape, the right support systems, the right vet, the right back-up vet, zero family responsibilities, really good insurance, more energy than I own today, and unlimited funding.

In simple words, nobody should try to do what I did. At my highest point, I had about 100 cats. Every day was a long hard day of physical labor. It was hard work. Do not try taking on more than a few cats without an adequate support team. Ever. It simply will not work out for everybody involved any other way.

My heart melts every time that I see a news story like this one about Cheryl Dashke. I am sure that she thought that she was helping the cats. The news article about Cheryl Dashke claims that her cats were losing hair; the cats were pulling their own hair out over stress and trying to tell Cheryl Dashke something important. It is a shame that Cheryl Dashke was not trained enough to understand what they were saying before she was arrested.